


The Favor

by peterparkr



Series: Febuwhump 2020 [11]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Fluff, Gen, except this isn't really whump oops, febuwhump 2020, idk it was fun, more like, or maybe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:20:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22867774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterparkr/pseuds/peterparkr
Summary: “Remember that time you coerced me into lying to Peter to distract him?”Tony grunts. ‘Coerced’ is a strong word. Michelle didn’t want Peter to get himself killed in an impossible fight against the giant shape-shifting monster rampaging through the city any more than Tony did.“And then you said you owed me a favor, but I negotiated for three.”He grunts again. ‘Negotiated’ isn’t strong enough. There were threats.ORTony gets roped into teaching MJ how to dance.
Relationships: Michelle Jones & Tony Stark, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: Febuwhump 2020 [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1620064
Comments: 14
Kudos: 203





	The Favor

**Author's Note:**

> Febuwhump Day 11: Graceless
> 
> I've never seen iZombie, but while I was struggling to come up with an idea for this prompt, I stumbled upon a [clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEd90VCKz7E) and somehow this fic was born.

If someone told Tony ten years ago what his life would be like today, there are a lot of things that he wouldn’t have believed. 

There’s the whole ‘superhero’ thing. Anyone would be skeptical about that. Then there’s Pepper—he never could have guessed that she would stick around at the company for another decade, let alone become the CEO and somehow start and maintain a relationship with him. But by far the most surprising development—the thing that would have made Tony of the past laugh and call bullshit on the whole story—would be the notion that it’s not unusual for him to find a teenager hanging out in his tower.

It’s precisely because of this new, strange truth about his life that he doesn’t really look up as he walks past the figure at the kitchen island. There’s a dull alarm bell buried somewhere in the back of his brain, under layers of drowsy caffeine-deficient fuzziness, telling him that even though it’s not unusual for Peter to hang around, it is a little early for him to be here. He doesn’t think that the kid would wake up before 8:00 unless the world was about to end.

He decides to worry about it after coffee.

“Hey, kid,” he mumbles. “‘S early.”

“That wasn’t exactly the response I expected.”

Tony jumps at the distinctly Not-Peter voice coming from behind him. He turns around, knocking the coffee pot against the cabinet on his way.

The person behind him is still _a_ kid and a familiar one at that—which is a positive. At least his instincts aren’t so shot that he doesn’t register a stranger in his home.

He squints—trying to determine if he’s having a pre-coffee hallucination. “Michelle Jones?”

“That’s more like it,” she says, a small smirk turning her lips upward.

Tony sweeps the room for any sign of _the_ kid, but comes up empty. This isn’t Michelle’s first time at the tower, so her presence isn't completely absurd, but usually she's here with Peter. Or the one time at Tony’s request. 

He’s starting to get a sinking feeling that this visit may be related to that one.“I’m guessing you wouldn’t be smiling if you were here to tell me that Peter was in mortal danger.”

“Probably not.”

Tony sighs and turns back to the coffee maker, waving his hand in a way that he hopes will prompt her to continue.

“Remember that time you coerced me into lying to Peter to distract him?”

Tony grunts. ‘Coerced’ is a strong word. She didn’t want Peter to get himself killed in an impossible fight against the giant shape-shifting monster rampaging through the city any more than Tony did.

“And then you said you owed me a favor, but I negotiated for three.”

He grunts again. ‘Negotiated’ isn’t strong enough. There were threats.

“And you said I could cash them in anytime.”

That was three months ago. He hasn’t heard a word from her since. “I thought you might have forgotten.”

She laughs. “Not a chance.”

He supposes that’s what he should have expected.

He waits until his mug is filled and then brings it over to Michelle, taking the seat to her right. She shifts a little in her chair.

“Alright. Hit me with it, Ms. Jones.”

Her confident exterior falters for a moment. She crosses her legs and then uncrosses them. 

“I get the impression that you went to a fancy private school growing up,” she says.

Tony narrows his eyes. “Boarding school, yes.”

“Even better,” she mutters. “Those kinds of places have fancy dances, right? Cotillion-type sh—stuff?”

“Yes,” Tony replies. “You could even call it Cotillion-type shit.”

She looks up at him before looking back down at her lap.

“Are you planning on taking cotillion classes?”

Michelle’s face morphs into something on the intersection of horrified and disgusted. “Um. No. No way.”

Tony takes a long sip of his coffee. He lowers his mug down to the table when he’s done. “Okay then. Was the favor just asking me about my youth because I honestly thought you were going to do something to bankrupt me or get me arrested so—”

“That’s not the favor! There's this—” Michelle cuts herself off, grimacing and then tucking some of her hair behind her ears.

He leans his head on the table, raising his eyebrows expectantly.

She sighs. “There’s this school dance. They’re usually not real dances, you know? People just stand there. But, they’re trying to make this one all old-fashioned. They're bringing in professional instructors after school and everything. Normally, I’d just blow it off, but—”

“But Peter wants to go,” Tony finishes.

Michelle slumps back in her chair. “He’s so excited about it. Like a golden retriever. Actually, a puppy. Like a golden retriever puppy.”

That’s who’s charged himself with protecting the city then, a golden retriever puppy. Tony chuckles at the mental image of a dog swinging around New York.

He can feel Michelle watching him. When he glances over, she quickly looks away, smoothing out the bottom of her shirt.

He’s pretty sure he knows what the favor is, but he doesn’t want to be the one to spell it out. The only problem is that Michelle is more stubborn than Tony is patient.

“Will you be attending these ‘professional instructor’s classes’ after school?”

He mentally crosses his fingers, praying that he’s wrong about the nature of the favor.

“No.” Her tone makes the notion seem so absurd, as if the normal response is soliciting lessons from him—billionaire, Avenger, her boyfriend’s whatever-he-is-to-Peter, rather than just going to the free after-school classes. “I can’t let anyone know I care enough about it to try.”

Tony doesn’t know how he got to this point. He needs to re-evaluate every choice he made that landed him here.

“I take it you want me to teach you?”

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, as if this is the hardest decision _she_ has ever made (when clearly Tony is the one who should be having a crisis because seriously, how the hell did he get here?) then nods.

“I’m going to be honest. This is not what I expected the favor to be.”

She leans forward to rest her elbows on the counter and her head into her hands. “Me neither.”

“Well,” Tony claps his hands together. “What are we looking at here? How bad is it?”

“I’m not bad at _dancing.”_ She pulls out her phone and opens Safari. There’s tab after tab of formal dance instructional videos open. She taps one and holds the screen out to Tony. “I just need to learn how to do this.”

* * *

Michelle Jones is bad at dancing.

She’s not hopeless. Tony’s seen hopeless—back at boarding school and at charity galas. She can keep a beat and has the ability to memorize the steps.

She just makes it look like every moment is pure torture—each movement painfully robotic. Her mouth moves, counting out the steps. Instead of continuing when she makes a mistake, she insists on starting over from the beginning. Then, each move becomes even more painstakingly precise in the worst possible way. There’s no fluidity—no grace.

Tony demonstrates a few steps in front of Michelle again, then leans back against the wall to watch her try to repeat it. Technically, she does the same thing that he did. It just doesn’t look like a dance when she does it.

“I thought you said you weren’t bad,” Tony laughs.

Michelle looks up quickly, eyes wide, before schooling her face into a completely neutral expression. Pepper glares at Tony from her spot on the couch. He internally winces. He doesn’t know why teenage proteges are accumulating around him like magnets to a pole, but they shouldn’t be. He’s never claimed to be _good_ at this.

“Well, I thought you would be a better teacher.” Michelle twists her foot around, rubbing the toe of her sneaker on the floor as she speaks.

“Fair enough.” He gestures to Pepper. “C’mon, Pep.”

She starts tapping at her tablet, as if she’s deep in some work-related crisis and hadn’t just been watching them.“I’m not involved in this.”

He walks over to her and grabs her hand, dragging her to her feet. “You are now, honey.”

He guides her over to Michelle and pushes her towards her. “You know quickstep?”

“You know that I know quickstep,” Pepper replies. 

“Hit it, Fri.”

Music starts and Pepper starts dancing, dragging Michelle with her.

“I think I messed up,” Michelle whispers. “We should start over.”

Pepper just shakes her head and keeps going.

“I’m making dinner. Don’t think I’m not watching,” Tony calls over his shoulder.

He doesn't so much make dinner as order take-out from the Chinese place down the street, and watch Pepper and Michelle from the kitchen, occasionally barking out corrections that make Pepper shoot him her most murderous stare.

Happy brings the food up—with mumbled assertions that he’s the head of security now, and even when he was Tony’s bodyguard his job technically shouldn’t have been to deliver food.

Tony just grins and pats him on the back, throwing cartons down on the table in front of Michelle and Pepper.

Michelle eats fast, seemingly so she can avoid making conversation. Every time Tony turns to her and opens his mouth to speak, she shoves another bite in that only allows her to nod in response to his words.

“Same time next week?” he finally asks after she sticks the last bit of food into her mouth.

She pokes at the inside of her empty carton for a minute, frowning when she realizes there’s nothing left to stop her from answering, before looking up. “Well. Um. The dance is a month away. Don’t you think I need more than four lessons?”

“Sure, kid. How does Thursday sound?”

She nods, disposes of her carton and gives them a quick smile. “My mom’s here to pick me up, so—”

“See you later.”

“Bye, MJ.”

After the door slams, Pepper gives Tony another one of her famous looks. It’s the same one she used to give him after Peter’s first few visits.

“What?” Tony asks.

She just shakes her head, a soft smile playing on her lips.

* * *

“Mr. Stark, can I ask you a personal question?”

Tony looks up from the hologram in front of him. Peter’s staring at him from a few lab benches away.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Why are you hanging out with my girlfriend?”

Tony’s hands freeze in the air above his work. He thought he was being so careful, scheduling his days so that Peter and Michelle were never in the vicinity of the tower at the same time. He doesn’t know how Peter could have figured it out. Michelle definitely wouldn’t have told him about their little dance lessons. She threatened Tony on penalty of death.

“Your girlfriend,” Tony repeats, trying to stall. “Oh—Michelle?”

“Yes Michelle! I only have one girlfriend.”

“Good, that’s the way to do it.” Tony turns back to his project. “Now, what’s this about Michelle?”

Peter groans. “Mr. Stark, I know you didn’t forget that fast.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. I’ve lost track of how many times my head has banged against the inside of the suit."

Peter tries to glare at him. It’s not very effective. Tony’s starting to get Michelle’s golden retriever puppy comparison. 

“Karen said that I couldn’t come to the tower yesterday because you were busy,” he says. “And I asked what you were busy with, because I was curious, not, like, that you have to make time for me or anything, but she said that MJ was here.”

It’s like Karen’s becoming more loose-lipped just from mere proximity to Peter. Tony wracks his brain for an explanation, but comes up short. He doesn’t want to lie to the kid. He also doesn’t want to face Michelle’s wrath for telling him the truth.

“Does she have an internship here now? Why wouldn’t she tell me that? She doesn't have to tell me everything but, like, that’s not a big deal.”

“Um.”

Peter’s eyes widen. “Oh my god. Was she bit by a radioactive spider, too? Or something else?”

Tony blinks. “Wait, what?”

“Is she becoming an Avenger, Mr. Stark? Is that why it’s a big secret?”

“Woah—I think that we’re—”

“This is crazy. Can you give me a hint about her powers? Actually, don’t. That’s probably an invasion of her privacy.” Peter claps his hands and rubs them together. “Agh! I want to know so bad. Do you think she’ll ever tell me? Maybe we could take out bad guys together. That would be so cool!”

Tony doesn’t know how this conversation turned so fast. “Pete—”

“Imagine us—Spider-Man and—” He looks at Tony expectantly to fill in the blank. When he doesn’t, Peter nods, accepting. “It was worth a shot. Anyway, Spider-Man and—MJ’s alter-ego! Swinging through the streets—er, I guess she probably won’t swing. She didn’t even like swinging with me—but you get the point. High school sweethearts by day, unstoppable vigilante duo by night! Hey, that would be a good movie!”

It sounds like Tony’s worst nightmare. One teenage superhero under his protection is bad enough. Two of them would shorten his lifespan by at least twenty years.

“I can’t wait to tell Ned! He’ll love this.” Peter frowns. “Or he might be super jealous. Do you have a vat of toxic waste we could throw him into—like in Sky High?”

“Peter—”

“I know, I know. I’m not allowed to throw my friends into vats of toxic waste.”

Tony feels his eyebrows climb towards his hairline. It almost sounds like Peter has had this talk with someone before. He needs to call May.

“Can you at least tell me what colors she’s going to wear? Oh wait, does she even have a suit yet? Don’t tell me. But maybe, we could match. That would be cute, I think.”

Peter’s dancing around with excitement, talking so fast that Tony misses half of the words. He gestures wildly with his arms as he speaks.

The motions carry him out of the room, a quick chirped ‘See ya, Mr. Stark’ the only warning Tony has before he’s gone.

He stares at the closing door, stirred out of his shocked daze by the sound of it slamming back into its frame.

“What have I done?” Tony whispers.

“Should I start on a suit design for Ms. Jones, Boss?”

Tony heaves a sigh. “Shut up, Friday.”

* * *

“Peter thinks you’re a superhero.”

Michelle pauses in between steps, snorting. “I know. It’s hilarious.”

“Don’t stop.” Tony gestures for her to continue dancing from his perch atop the counter. Michelle rolls her eyes and starts swaying around the room again. “Did you plant this idea in his head?”

“Nope, he came up with it all by himself.” A fiendish grin rises on her face. “I might be playing into it a little bit, though. I make a big deal about sneaking away to come over here.”

Tony analyzes her movements as she speaks. They’re less jerky when she’s talking about Peter rather than overthinking each step she takes. He runs experiments with it throughout the afternoon. Whenever he gets her talking, more relaxed, her motions become more fluid. If he lets the room fall silent, her face puckers up into a grimace and she goes back into her stilted way of dancing.

* * *

“You think too much,” Tony says. “That’s your problem.”

He tried to come up with a good way to tell her for about a week before deciding to just throw the statement out there. Michelle’s blunt. He thinks she should appreciate that method more than beating around the bush.

Michelle stops dancing and FRIDAY cuts the music. She walks over to the kitchen and fills a glass of water.

“I have to think about it—” she says, between gulps. “Otherwise I won’t do it right.”

Tony spins around in his chair so that he’s facing the kitchen. “I think you’ve known the steps since our second lesson.”

“Of course I know them. That doesn’t mean I don’t have to think about them.”

Tony hums, mulling the words over in his mind. “You said you weren’t ‘bad at dancing’ just at this formal stuff, right? So you like dancing—for fun?”

Michelle eyes him carefully over her glass of water. “I never said that.”

“FRIDAY, give me some pop—whatever the kids listen to these days.”

A fun beat that Tony’s never heard starts playing through the speakers. He leaps to his feet and starts bopping around the room.

“This song is, like, ten years old,” Michelle calls, the soles of her sneakers firmly planted on the kitchen floor.

Tony gestures for FRIDAY and the volume increases. Michelle puts her glass down and covers her ears.

“Get out here!” Tony yells over the music. “FRIDAY, add some lights.”

Disco-like colors start to flash around the room. Tony points diagonally down to his left then up in the air a few times before switching to his other hand.

She shakes her head, elbows rotating back and forth.

“Come on! You chose this favor, don’t waste it! You’ve only got two more.”

Michelle bites her lip. Slowly, her hands come down and she trudges toward him.

“There we go! Now, dance.”

She brings up a fist and pumps it two times. It’s the saddest, most unenthusiastic dance move that Tony’s ever seen. Her face is a picture of disinterest.

“Come on, MJ!” Tony twirls around and then starts shimmying his shoulders. “Let go!”

“You look _ridiculous_.”

“What does it matter!?” Tony throws his hands up in the air and waves them in time with his hips. “Just dance!”

“Oh my god.” Michelle covers her face with her hands. “I can’t watch you do this.”

“You don’t have to! Close your eyes and dance.” Tony closes his own. “It’s just for fun.”

“What is happening right now?” There’s a note of despair in Michelle’s voice.

Tony has no idea. He spins in another circle and hops a few times. His fingers form peace signs and he brings them up to his face, wiggling them across his eyes. Then, he transitions into the Robot. 

When Michelle doesn’t comment on his antics, he cracks his eyes open into narrow slivers. 

Her eyes are squeezed shut, but there’s a small smile on her face. Most importantly, she’s dancing, jumping around and moving with the music. She might not be the best in the world, but she’s certainly not the worst either. It looks like she’s having fun with it. Tony grins and closes his eyes again, goes back to the Robot.

“Um.”

Tony’s eyes snap open. Peter’s standing just outside of the elevator, head swiveling between him and Michelle. They must not have heard the doors chiming over the music.

They all stand, frozen in place, brightly colored lights washing over them while the music continues to pipe through the speakers.

Peter opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it again. “Is your power dancing—with your eyes closed?”

Michelle crosses her arms as her cheeks start to flush. Red light filters over her face, accentuating the color. She ducks her head before turning it to Tony for guidance. 

He shrugs and shakes his head. “Don’t look at me.”

“Number two,” she blurts out and then mouths, “Fix this.”

“I’m pretty sure this is outside my realm of capability.” He picks up his glasses from the table and slides them on. “Unless you want me to come up with a way to wipe his memory. Might take me, say, two weeks? A month at most.”

“Fine,” Michelle says.

“That was a _joke._ ”

“I’m so confused,” Peter interjects.

Michelle spins toward him, gesturing around the room frantically. “It’s not what it looks like.”

Peter holds a hand up to his ear and points at one of the speakers. “What? I can’t hear—”

“I said this isn’t what it looks like,” she shouts louder.

Peter takes a few hesitant steps forward. “I don't even know what this looks like.”

“It’s a dance lesson,” Tony chimes in.

Michelle spins to him, mouth open in scandalized shock. “ _Mr. Stark_.”

Peter’s head tilts to the side. “You teach dance lessons?”

Tony throws his hands up. “Well, not usually!”

“This is so confusing.” Peter glances over at Michelle. “So you don’t have superpowers?”

“Well, we don’t know that for su—”

“What?” Peter yells.

“She doesn’t have superpowers,” Tony shouts back.

Michelle frowns at him. Peter sinks onto the couch. The look on his face would suggests that his life has been altered irreversibly. It’s a little dramatic. Pepper would probably tell him that he has no right to call anyone that.

“No offense, Mr. Stark, but it didn’t really look like a dance lesson. You know we’re supposed to waltz and stuff—”

“It was a teaching moment! About more than just dance!”

“Your eyes were _closed_!”

“Alright!” MJ yells. “FRIDAY, please turn the music off. I can’t even hear my own thoughts.”

The penthouse falls silent. The lights still flash from green to yellow. Michelle inhales slowly. “And the lights, please.”

They turn off.

Michelle looks up at Peter once, then down at her feet. “Okay—I—well, I wanted to learn how to dance for the stupid Midtown Ball because you’re so excited about it and I want to be able to quickstep and waltz and—”

“Samba,” Tony supplies. “Fox-trot, rumba, swing—”

“All of those.” She taps her foot a few times. “With you. And like, actually know how to do them so you wouldn’t be embarrassed. And I wouldn’t be embarrassed.”

“Embarrassed?” Peter turns around and leans over the edge of the couch. “I just want have fun and spend time with you! I don’t care if we’re any good at it. Unless you want us to be good at it—which in that case, Mr. Stark, I might need some lessons from you, too, because the classes that the school provides are basically just Flash critiquing the instructor the whole time, so—”

“Sorry, Pete,” Tony sniffs. “I’m booked.”

" _Dude_ ," Peter says, glancing over his shoulder at Tony before turning back to Michelle.

“I can’t believe you’ve stolen my mentor.” Peter actually does look kind of put out by it, but his face quickly shifts into a grin. “But, I just want to have fun and maybe make a bit of a fool of myself. With you. If that’s okay?”

Michelle’s lips twitch into a smile. “Yeah, I think I’m okay with that. Gotta ‘let go’, a little, I guess.”

A warm surge of pride runs through Tony. He has the same sense of accomplishment when he finishes a project—like his work here is done and he can go rest for a while, or more likely, start the next one.

“So, while we’re here, do you want to go get dinner or something?” Peter asks. “If you’re not busy?”

Tony shakes his head and walks into the kitchen.

“Yeah, um. Sure.” Michelle grabs her coat from the chair she left it on, but then stops in her tracks on the way back. “Wait, are you busy? Did you come over here for a reason?”

“Nope, not really. I just wanted to see if I could figure out more about your powers, but I guess those don’t exist.”

“You don’t know that,” Michelle replies, pulling the coat on. “Hey, Mr. Stark?”

Tony stands a little straighter. “Yes?”

“You did alright, so thanks.”

He laughs. “I’m a man of my word.”

“I’ll be back for number two.”

“I’m sure you will be.” 

The elevator arrives and the pair walk inside. 

“What’s number two?” Tony hears Peter ask as the doors start to slide closed.

“Don’t worry about it,” Michelle answers.

**Author's Note:**

> My [tumblr!](https://peterparkrr.tumblr.com)


End file.
